HCM City to open major bridge to traffic before Tet

Rach Chiec 2 bridge now under construction, east of HCMC, will be put into use before the upcoming Lunar New Year (Tet) in early February.

The city government has told the HCMC Department of Transport to urge Urban Traffic Management Unit No.2 to accelerate construction work on Rach Chiec 2 and open it to traffic to help facilitate traffic at the city’s eastern gateway, especially in the area of Cat Lai and Binh Thai intersection.

The four-lane bridge measuring 868 meters in length belongs to the first phase and costs VND871 trillion (over US$38.75 million). Another four-lane bridge will be built in phase two.

Currently, the eastern part of HCMC has Rach Chiec 1 Bridge on Hanoi Highway.

Urban Traffic Management Unit No.2 needs to study building a road section to connect Le Van Viet Street and Tram 2 intersection to the eastern ring road and a road section from Rach Chiec 2 bridge to Binh Thai intersection to facilitate traffic in the area.

The ring road will help shorten the distance between the Saigon Hi-Tech Park and Tan Cang-Cat Lai Terminal by 6-8 kilometers and reduce traffic on Hanoi Highway and the east of the city.

The ring road was designed to be about 70 kilometers long from Nguyen Van Linh Avenue to Phu My Bridge, Binh Thai Intersection on Hanoi Highway, Go Dua Intersection, Tan Tao Intersection, Ho Hoc Lam and Ba To streets, and Nguyen Van Linh Parkway.

The ring road is expected to solve chronic traffic congestion in inner-city areas, as trucks will not travel through the inner-city areas when transporting cargo to and from ports in HCMC and between the southeast and the Mekong Delta.

HCM City to use new criteria for poor households

A new set of criteria relating to education, health, employment, social insurance, living conditions and access to information will be applied to determine poor and near-poor households in the 2016-2020 period.

Nguyen Thi Thu, who was elected vice chairwoman of the city government last week, told a seminar on Tuesday that the new method will replace the current one that relies mostly on income to define poor households.

In the 2016-2020 period, the city will depend on both income and other criteria like academic degree of adults, education for children, vocational qualification, health service, employment, health and social insurance, water supply, telecom service, and assets to identify which households are poor and near-poor.

With the new poverty standards in place, a household will be considered poor if it has average per capita income of VND21 million a year and meets less than half of the new criteria. Meanwhile, a household will be seen as near poor when it has average annual per capita income of VND21-28 million and fails to meet less than four of the criteria.

Deputy Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Trong Dam said indentifying poor households through income has exposed shortcomings over the past years and has not reflected their real situation. Income of many households has surpassed the poverty line but they cannot benefit from the basic services.

Thu said the city has had no poor households since 2012 if the national poor standards are used but a number of citizens can neither access social services nor meet basic living conditions.

A survey of the HCMC Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs showed some 9% of the households in the city are not poor by income standards but they can easily relapse into poverty.

According to HCMC’s current poverty criteria, the number of poor households with annual income of less than VND16 million per person and near-poor households with income of VND16-21 million per person per year account for 0.5% and 2% of the total households in the city this year respectively.

Bitter recriminations as fake coffee spreads

Fake coffee, produced using sometimes harmful chemicals, is ironically being widely sold in the country’s coffee producing hub of Central Highlands province of Dak Lak and Ho Chi Minh City.

The official response has been unco-ordinated and ineffective in dealing with the problem.

Chemicals to create coffee flavours can be easily found at Kim Bien Market, HCM City. These chemicals lack expiry date or point of origins but are readily available at VND380,000 (USD17) a litre. The sellers even give advice about how prospective coffee sellers go about their business.

"You only need a small amount of coffee and lots of ice. No one will be able to recognise that it's fake," a seller said.

The chemicals are also widely sold on the internet. The owner of one Facebook page claimed that they had chemicals to fake various coffees including Moka and Robusta. According to the page, they can create up to 320 coffee cups with two litres of the chemicals.

Nguyen Thu Phuong, a cafe owner in HCM City, said, "We spent at least VND3m to have five litres of good coffee. They must have use dangerous chemicals in order to create five litres for a few hundred thousand VND."

According to HCM City Plant Protection Department, 92 coffee processing facilities operate but they lack the ability to deal with fake manufacturers.

Tran Ngoc Thanh, head of Dak Lak Province's Agro Forestry Fisheries Quality Assurance Department, under the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the responsibility belonged to the health sector. Meanwhile, Tran Van Tiet, vice head of provincial Food Administration, under the Department of Health, claimed that shops such as department stores are responsibilities of the Department of Industry and Trade.

Nguyen Dao Chi, vice head of the Market Surveillance Agency, denied the claim, saying that they only checked the invoices and business operation, and food quality were responsibility of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Cam Ranh International Airport arrivals rise by 20%

The Cam Ranh International Airport saw a total of 2.7 million passengers from the beginning of this year, an increase of 20 per cent year-on-year. Around 880,000 of them were foreigners, up by 32 per cent.

There are 33 flights per day, including 18 international flights.

Many carriers use Cam Ranh Airport, including Vietnam Airlines, Jetstar Pacific, Pegasus Airlines, Azur Air, China Southern, and Korean Air.

More carriers from Thailand and China are expected to operate at the airport by the end of the first quarter in 2016.

Number of licensed Windows users in Vietnam triples to 30%: Microsoft

Three out of ten new computers sold to Vietnamese consumers on a monthly basis are installed with a licensed Windows version, indicating a great reduction of piracy, Microsoft Vietnam said recently.

The number of computers and gadgets running genuine Windows 10 in Vietnam is rising rapidly, Vu Minh Tri, director of the Vietnamese business of the US software titan, said at the “Microsoft Devices Day” event in Ho Chi Minh City.

The piracy rate of Windows products in Vietnam used to be as high as 90%, but it has so far gone down to 70% thanks to effort from local distributors, Tri added.

Of every 100,000 new computers sold to the market every month, around 30,000 devices have the genuine Windows 10 platform, the latest version of Microsoft’s flagship operating system that was officially available on July 29, Microsoft Vietnam Director Vu Minh Tri elaborated.

“Many retailers have joined in the program of selling computers that are preinstalled with licensed Windows 10 operating systems, which is largely attributable to the rising number of legitimate users,” Tri added.

Vietnamese consumers have gotten accustomed to buying desktops and laptops with genuine Windows preinstalled, as it is cheaper to do so than buying the devices and software licenses separately, according to retailers.

Microsoft Vietnam said it is enhancing cooperation with local businesses to slash the piracy rate further.

In Vietnam, there are also more than 35,000 licensed subscribers of the Office 365, a collection of cloud-based office applications, according to the company.

The “Microsoft Devices Day” showcased the ecosystem of products powered by Windows 10, from personal computers and laptops to two-in-one devices such as Surface.

The company also revealed that it has yet to have plans to officially distribute the latest two-in-one detachable devices, Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, in the Southeast Asian country.

In June, Microsoft inaugurated its first-ever authorized reseller store in Vietnam, under a strategic partnership with FPT, a leading Vietnamese tech firm.

The Hanoi outlet offers an assortment of best-in-class Microsoft products, including Windows phones, feature phones, Surface devices as well as Windows, Microsoft Office 365, among others.

Can Tho invests over VND9.6 trillion to upgrade education infrastructure by 2030

The Mekong Delta city of Can Tho will invest more than VND9.6 trillion (US$422.4 million) to upgrade the city's education system by 2030, announced Chairman Vo Thanh Thong of Can Tho municipal People’s Committee.

During a meeting yesterday with relevant city departments on attracting foreign investment and upgrading education infrastructure by 2030, Thong said that most of the money will be used to upgrade infrastructure and expand schools’ size at pre-school, secondary and tertiary levels towards standardisation and modernisation, meeting the need for high quality human resources for the whole region.

Each year, VND520-550 billion from the State budget will be used for the work and VND55-60 billion will be mobilised from the private sector. Funding for information technology equipment is about VND11 billion per year.

The city will focus on three key measures: expanding investment in building educational infrastructure in rural and remote areas; giving priorities in land use for schools’ development; and calling for foreign investment in high quality international school models.

As planned, by 2030, the city will build 183 new schools. The city targets to have 507 schools meeting national standards, an average increase of 40 schools a year; all communes/wards with secondary schools meeting national standards; and over 80% of communes/wards with preschools, secondary and high schools meeting national standards.

Currently, Singapore’s KinderWorld education group has approval from the city’s authorities for its construction of three international schools in Can Tho, including the 25,595m2 Singapore International School to be built in Ninh Kieu district, Pegasus University on Nguyen Van Cu street, Ninh Kieu district, and the life skills education school Outward Bound in O Mon district. Construction for the three projects will kick start in August 2016, contributing to improve education quality in Can Tho.

Soc Trang province has 19 new-style rural communes

The southern province of Soc Trang reported that 19 out of 80 communes in the province have completed all 19 criteria to be considered as new rural areas, equal to 23.75 percent.

The number of such communes is expected to reach 22 by the end of the year.

At a December 18 conference reviewing five years of implementation of the national goal programme on building new-style rural areas from 2011-2015, the province’s programme steering committee said the province has raised 6,760 billion VND (300 million USD) for the cause.

Soc Trang has set the goal of having more than half of communes in the province and two districts qualify as new rural areas by 2020.

The province hoped to raise 23,450 billion VND in the period of 2016-2020 to realise the target.

The national target programme’s criteria cover infrastructure, production, living standards, income and culture, among others, aiming to boost rural regions in Vietnam. A district must have at least 75 percent of its communes meeting all the 19 criteria in order to receive the title of new rural district.

As many as 1,300 communes were recognised as satisfying the criteria, or 14.5 percent of the total, as of November 2015, according to a report delivered by Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat at a Hanoi conference on December 8.

At the district level, 11 were accorded the status, including those in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Quang Ninh, Nam Dinh, Lam Dong, Dong Nai and Hau Giang.

Vietnam aims to have 50 percent of all communes nationwide meet all the requirements by the end of 2020.

Project launched to improve awareness for women married to Koreans

A programme supporting local women married to citizens of the Republic of Korea (RoK) is underway in the Mekong Delta province of Hau Giang’s Vi Thanh city from December 18-20.

The programme is part of a 390,000-USD project, which has been piloted in Hau Giang and northern Hai Duong province since July and lasts for 18 months.

According to Bui Thi Hoa, Vice Chairwoman of the Vietnam Women’s Union, the project focuses on communications activities, counselling and education for local women before and after getting married. It is expected to mitigate risks involved, particularly those arising from illegal match-making agencies.

In Vi Thanh city, experts are providing local staff of the project with legal training on marriage to foreigners. Communications campaigns, group counselling are also organised to help citizens from both countries understand more about the other country’s culture, customs and laws.

Statistics from the Ministry of Public Security showed that between 2008 and June 2014, more than 115,600 Vietnamese citizens got married to foreigners; 92 percent of these citizens were women.

In Hau Giang alone, 11,000 women married foreigners since 2004; more than 70 percent of these marriages involved the RoK’s citizens.

Hau Giang spends big to ensure clean water supply for rural residents

The Mekong Delta province of Hau Giang plans to allocate more than 35 billion VND (1.56 million USD) to bring clean water to local rural residents in 2016.

Under the plan, over 4,000 additional rural households will access to clean water, raising the rate of rural households supplied with clean water to 88 percent.

The rural clean water programme will be implemented together with other socio-economic development and new-style rural area building programmes with focus on the remote and far-flung areas with crowded population.

The province aims to mobilise different resources for the rural clean water programme while offering incentives to investors from other provinces in the sector.

The programme is expected to improve the living and health condition of rural residents while contributing to the environmental protection.

In 2015, the province spent nearly 26 billion VND (1.16 million USD) to build water facilities, serving roughly 5,000 households in remote and disadvantaged areas, especially those with salt intrusion.

The amount also covered the construction of concentrated clean water supply stations in the communes of Nhon Nghia A and Thuan Hung in Long My district.

Six irrigation works were also built in Long My and Vi Thanh districts, and Long My and Nga Bay towns, which suffered from salt intrusion.

Over the past 12 years, more than 520 billion VND (23.21 million USD) have been invested

in developing local water supply system, of which more than 350 billion (15.62 million USD) is sourced from the State budget.

Currently, the locality has 250 water supply stations, serving 33,000 households, or 86 percent of the local population. Some half of them are using clean water that meets the Health Ministry’s standard.

Farmers need more public expenditure

Despite many State policies and programmes for the agriculture sector, public expenditure on small and marginal farmers seems inadequate to address the problems of food security and hunger.

This was the conclusion reached at a workshop in Ha Noi by a study team from the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Jawaharlal Nehru University of India and Action Aid Vietnam.

Their study looked at Vietnamese agriculture in the context of global integration, which is the link between public investment on Vietnamese small holders (households with less than two hectares of land) and food security as well as sustainable development.

The study's survey covered small-scale farming households in 14 villages of seven communes across four provinces in Viet Nam which are northern provinces of Cao Bang and Ha Giang, southern province Vinh Long, and Central Highlands province Dak Lak.

The workshop participants including policy makers, economists and officers from the ministries of Agriculture and Rural Development, Finance, and Planning and Investment appreciated the results as they contribute to the compilation and implementation of State policies on agriculture and rural area development.

According to economic professor Praveen Jha from Jawaharlal Nehru University, there is a significant gap between the percentage of Vietnamese people knowing about governmental price support and the real number of farmers accessing to it.

Taking together the averages of households surveyed in these provinces, 47.3 per cent of the households were aware of the support while only 18.2 per cent of the households made use of it.

There is a lack of awareness among smallholder farmers regarding available public provisions, researchers said.

Another significant figure revealed at the workshop was the agricultural income of the surveyed households. It turns out to be around US$0.77 per person each day, which is, according to Jha, well below the international poverty line of $1.25 per person per day.

Jha said that the low level of income has serious consequences in terms of poverty, under nutrition and posed severe implications on food security.

"They (the farmers) feed the world, they remain hungry," he said.

As many as 19 per cent of Viet Nam's population, most of which live in rural areas, still suffer from a lack of adequate food, food security indicators from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on 22nd October this year indicated. About 10 per cent of the country's population is undernourished.

Nguyen Anh Duong, one of the researchers from CIEM, affirmed that the integration into the global economy is a driving force for agricultural development while what promotes growth is definitely public investment.

The main challenges for public provision in Viet Nam are how to create a foundation and encourage the participation of the private sector and citizens' organisations in upgrading agricultural infrastructure, in addition to maintaining the involvement of small farmers, and meeting practical demands of agriculture, rural areas and farmers, he said.

The government should recognise the individual as well as the collective rights of the smallholders to organise democratically and to participate in the policy debate and raise their concerns to protect their interests with a balanced representation, Jha suggested.

There is a dire need to formulate a support price mechanism so that farmers can get appropriate returns on their agricultural output, he added.

Poor farmers lives improved since 2012

The livelihoods of 200,000 poor farmers in 13 provinces, including Quang Binh, An Giang and Soc Trang, have improved since 2012.

The improvements were made under the Community Based Climate Change Action Grant Programme to help farmers adapt to the effects of climate change. A total of AUD15 million (US$10.7 million), funded by the Australian government via a partnership of seven non-governmental organisations over three years, was provided as part of the programme.

Nguyen Thi Nguyet, 46, of Dai Trach Commune in central Quang Binh Province, said her rice harvest output had doubled with the new cultivation techniques.

Nguyet collected 300kg of rice, planted over 500sqm of land each month, instead of the 150kg she had collected in the past, she said.

"So my family's income from rice production has also doubled." She earns some VND500,000 (US$22) per 100kg of rice sold.

Tran Thi Kim Chi, head of the Women's Association in Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta province of An Giang, said local farmers, especially women, were starting to learn about climate change and how its impact could disrupt their lives.

The farmers learnt how to use dried straw to plant mushrooms and feed cows and buffaloes instead of burning the straw, creating greenhouse gas emissions, she said.

Tran Quang Hoai, deputy director of the Department of Water Resources under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, at the closing ceremony of the programme yesterday said that public awareness of climate change had increased alongside the livelihoods of poor farmers, even though the developments of climate change were complicated.

Hoai said the programme's results were greatly appreciated because Viet Nam was one of the countries suffering the most from climate change.

Australian Ambassador to Viet Nam Hugh Borrowman said Australia was strongly committed to addressing the impacts of climate change.

Lessons from the programme concerning the creation of better links between farmers and the private sector and the promotion of women's participation in decision-making will be particularly relevant in adopting new strategies, he said.

The programme was divided into a variety of projects controlled by the partnerships of seven NGOs, including CARE International in Viet Nam.

Farmers face losses amid low demand for bananas

With an increasing demand for banana exports over the last few years, farmers in many localities have grown a large quantity of bananas.

However, this year, farmers suffered great losses due to declining demand and a sharp drop in banana prices.

In Vinh Phuc and Lao Cai provinces, banana prices dropped from VND120,000 to about VND15,000 per banana tier, and even with the record low price, very few traders are purchasing bananas.

This year, unsold bananas are so abundant that farmers are using them to feed cattle, while the demand for bananas exceeded the supply last year.

There are about 130,000ha of bananas nationwide with productivity of 1.4 million tonnes per year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

European countries, Japan, the Middle East, Russia and Korea consume about 10 per cent of Viet Nam's banana exports, but China remains the leading market for exports.

About 90 per cent of Vietnamese bananas are exported to China each year, according to Pham Van Hoi, a representative of the Agriculture Ecology Center.

The heavy dependence on one market as a source of banana consumption makes it hard for farmers to face a change in demand.

China's demand for exported bananas has declined due to its expansion in banana growing areas. As a result, Vietnamese farmers can hardly sell the fruit.

Due to its low quality and small size, Vietnamese bananas are unable to meet the qualifications of big markets that have a high demand for bananas.

The failure of farmers to follow strict planting procedures is attributed to the low quality of bananas, and thus it does not meet importers' requirements.

In addition, banana growing areas in Viet Nam are scattered across the country, which contributes to an increase in processing, storage and packaging costs.

There should be a policy encouraging businesses to closely collaborate with farmers to produce competitive goods, said Vu Thi Nhan, a representative of Ban Mai Company.

To find a stable market for Vietnamese bananas, a policy is needed to provide markets and support to export businesses, according to Professor Dao The Anh.

A research body that focuses on studying major markets and competitors needs to be formed, experts say.

In addition, wholesale markets and concentrated shopping malls should be developed.

Water resources key for agriculture restructuring

Strengthening the capacity for water resource management remained a key objective in the process to restructure Viet Nam's agricultural sector, said deputy minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Hoang Van Thang yesterday in a workshop on water resource management in Ha Noi.

As an agriculture-based country, the management of water resources has a significant impact on the livelihood of millions of people and therefore must be prioritised and improved with a focus on disaster risk reduction and adaptation to climate change, according to the deputy minister.

He said the restructuring process requires Viet Nam to utilise a mix between structure based solutions such as the construction of dykes, reservoirs and other irrigation infrastructure projects and non-structure based solutions, which aimed to enhance the country's capacity in disaster management, forest replantation and flood control.

A report from the ministry's Water Resource Department indicated that measures had been taken to address some of the issues related to climate change such as decreased water supply in the Mekong Delta including the construction of water-efficient irrigation systems and technologies in various agricultural activities.

However, the management of water resources in localities across the country still showed numerous shortcomings and limitations as provincial authorities relied too much on the local agriculture department and disaster risk management was often too structure-based lacking solutions to gather support from local communities as well as the insufficient implementation of scientific and technological advances.

In addition, landslides, erosion and sea encroachment have become more frequent and more serious in many localities. In the last decade, a large area in the central province of Quang Nam, which consisted of populated urban zones and tourism centres, has come under threat of landslides.

Associated Prof. Nguyen Trung Viet from the Central Region College of Technology-Economics and Water Resource said that climate change and unregulated sand exploitation both contributed to an increase in both the number of landslides and their severity in the province.

Viet said there was insufficient data to precisely pinpoint the root of the problem but immediate measures must be taken to reinforce the coastline, especially areas which have been known as prone to landslides such as the Cua Dai area.

Late in November, big waves and strong winds washed away a 300m section of Cua Dai Beach, 5km from Hoi An ancient town, a major tourist destination of Viet Nam, in just four days in spite of local efforts to save the beach.

Stricter regulation needed on Dak Lak farm trucks

The regulation of cong nong (farm trucks) in the Central Highlands Province of Dak Lak has been weak which has led to accidents, according to local authorities.

Trinh Huu Kiem, head of the Transport Division under the Dak Lak Department of Transport said that setting up separate lanes for the vehicles in the province was difficult because of a lack of land and funds.

At present, some small mechanic workshops in the province modify some parts of the vehicles on their own without checking with relevant agencies, making them more dangerous, he said.

Most of drivers are ethnic minorities and their awareness of obeying transport laws was limited.

Co-operation between different offices in managing and giving punishment to the violated vehicles was loose, said Kiem.

Do Binh Chinh, deputy director of the provincial Department of Transport, said that at present the province have not found any effective vehicles to replace the farm trucks.

The province asked districts and towns to strengthen their management on the vehicles to reduce traffic accidents on the roads which farm trucks often passed, said Chinh.

Every year, the department joined hands with driver training centres to open training courses for four-wheel vehicle drivers and spread knowledge on traffic laws for ethnic minorities.

Transport police were asked to improve their checking and give warnings to farm truck drivers, said Chinh.

Chinh said that the State should have polices to give financial support to people studying to drive farm trucks.

The driver training period should be shortened while the transport law education period should be lengthened.

The Viet Nam Register should give guidance on checking and issuing certificates of technological safety for the farm trucks, he said.

About 78,800 farm vehicles are operating and were registered in the province. And more than 5,000 others did not register.

Since 1996, the province issued driving licences for four-wheel vehicles for more than 10,400 people.

A farm truck accident happened at 6pm last Friday in Pong Drang Commune, Krong Buk District in the Central Highlands Province of Dak Lak.

The farm truck, without number plate, transporting coffee, driven by Nguyen Minh Quyen, 30, from the district towards Buon Ma Thuot City, crashed into a motorbike running towards the same direction.

Quyen then lost his control and crashed into a bicycle with two people on it.

Quyen and two people on the bicycle, H'Luong Nie and H'Boat Nie, both 17, were taken to Dak Lak Hospital.

COPD and asthma on the rise

Despite numerous efforts in diagnoses and treatment, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), along with asthma and resultant fatalities are on the rise in the world and Viet Nam.

Primary studies in Viet Nam in 2009 showed that 4.2 per cent of the country's population suffered from COPD while the asthma rate was about 4.1 per cent, participants heard at a workshop today in Ha Noi. More than seven per cent of men suffered from COPD, compared to 1.9 per cent women.

Experts said that middle-aged smokers, people who come in contact with smoke, dust and job-related chemicals, or those with symptoms such as cough, chest discomfort and shortness of breath should consult doctors for breathing tests and treatment.

Viet Nam launched a COPD and asthma prevention project under the National Target Programme in 2011.

The programme developed a COPD and asthma management network with 90 offices located in general hospitals, and TB and lung hospitals, in 45 provinces and cities nationwide.

It also helped to improve diagnoses and treatment ability and the community's awareness towards COPD and asthma prevention.

Between 2011 and 2015, the project has trained more than 1,100 doctors and health workers, provided health checks and treatment for thousands of patient visits. During the World COPD days, the project provided check-ups and consultations for more than 150,000 patients, detected 6,500 COPD cases and more than 5,200 asthma patients.

Health experts said COPD was the sixth most common disease in the world, and ranked fourth in the list of those with a high mortality rate, including coronary thrombosis, cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

200,000 poor farmers' livelihoods improved

The livelihoods of 200,000 poor farmers in 13 provinces, including Quang Binh, An Giang and Soc Trang, have improved since 2012.

The improvements were made under the Community Based Climate Change Action Grant Programme to help farmers adapt to the effects of climate change. A total of AUD15 million (US$10.7 million), funded by the Australian government via a partnership of seven non-governmental organisations over three years, was provided as part of the programme.

Nguyen Thi Nguyet, 46, of Dai Trach Commune in central Quang Binh Province, said her rice harvest output had doubled with the new cultivation techniques.

Nguyet collected 300kg of rice, planted over 500sqm of land each month, instead of the 150kg she had collected in the past, she said.

"So my family's income from rice production has also doubled." She earns some VND500,000 (US$22) per 100kg of rice sold, she added.

Tran Thi Kim Chi, head of the Women's Association in Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta An Giang Province, said local farmers, especially women, were starting to learn about climate change and how its impact could disrupt their lives.

The farmers learnt how to use dried straw to plant mushrooms and feed cows and buffaloes instead of burning the straw, creating greenhouse gas emissions, she said.

Tran Quang Hoai, deputy director of the Department of Water Resources under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, at the closing ceremony of the programme yesterday said that public awareness of climate change had increased alongside the livelihoods of poor farmers, even though the developments of climate change were complicated.

Hoai said the programme's results were greatly appreciated because Viet Nam was one of the countries suffering the most from climate change.

Australian Ambassador to Viet Nam Hugh Borrowman said Australia was strongly committed to addressing the impacts of climate change.

Lessons from the programme concerning the creation of better links between farmers and the private sector and the promotion of women's participation in decision-making will be particularly relevant in adopting new strategies, he said.

The programme was divided into a variety of projects controlled by the partnerships of seven NGOs, including CARE International in Viet Nam.

Viet Nam hospital achieves rare medical feat

Viet Nam has become only the sixth country in the world to transfer a patient on extracorporeal life support, on what is effectively a modified heart-lung machine that pumps and oxygenates blood and performs dialysis, to another country.

Doctors at Family Medical Practice Viet Nam succeeded in transferring a foreign patient with cardiac and respiratory failure back home by air on Sunday.

The patient was placed aboard a Viet Nam Airlines ATR aircraft customised by FMP into an air ambulance with an ICU ventilator and monitoring system.

The patient was reliant for survival on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine (ECMO), which allows the heart and lungs to rest.

Traditionally, doctors have used it to support newborn or premature babies and provide cardio-pulmonary support to patients recovering from lung failure, heart failure, or surgery

Offshore workers concerned about social insurance

Many people have said they must pay various charges and fees for going overseas for guest work, so the fact that they will pay social insurance from early next year under a new rule will make their life hard.

The Government’s Decree 115 which guides the implementation of the 2014 Law on Social Insurance requires all Vietnamese workers abroad to pay compulsory social insurance from January 1.

Tran Van Lieu, a resident in the northern province of Hai Duong, voiced his outcry over the new regulation. He said he borrowed some VND140 million (US$6,200) to pay charges for a contract job in the agriculture sector in Japan in April 2016.

With a monthly salary of VND15 million, Lieu said he has to work for more than one year to pay the debt. Therefore, compulsory social insurance will place a burden on him and his family.   

Another worker, Tran Van Cong, said labor export firms force people to pay a variety of fees amounting to US$13,000-14,000 (around VND300 million) to work in South Korea but none of these fees is mentioned in the contract.

“We can recover the sum in more than one year if our job progresses smoothly; otherwise, our debt will be still there when our offshore labor contracts expire,” Cong said.

Cong said workers might dodge paying tens of millions of dong in social insurance for work in Korea for four years if they are unsure about the benefits they can get.

Dieu Ba Duoc, head of the social insurance policy enforcement department at Vietnam Social Insurance, admitted that it is difficult to implement Decree 115 as a guidance circular for the decree is not available.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the director of a company said she knows about the regulation via media reports but has got no guidelines from competent authorities. She said she is afraid laborers would not pay social insurance as they have to shoulder multiple fees to land a job overseas.   

She said a similar regulation was removed in the past. She asked why the regulation had been reinstated.

Lawyer Nguyen Kieu Hung said he was surprised to hear the regulation on compulsory social insurance for offshore Vietnamese workers. He noted that laborers may have to pay social insurance twice if the rule takes effect.

Hung is also concerned about other issues about related procedures and wages of guest workers that are used to calculate social insurance.  

Hung said Decree 115 does not contain detailed regulations so it is unlikely to come into force from January 1, 2016.

Pham Do Nhat Tan, vice chairman of the Vietnam Association of Manpower Supply, said around 80,000-100,000 Vietnamese go abroad for guest work a year and the new regulation will result in more social insurance payers. After returning home, they can continue paying insurance to meet requirements to receive pensions after retirement.

Population planning crucial to sustainable development

Population and family planning work has been defined as a key player in Viet Nam's socio-economic development strategy, officials said at a workshop in Ha Noi yesterday.

The workshop, themed "Population and Sustainable Development in Viet Nam", was jointly held by the Party Central Committee's Commission for Popularisation and Education and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

A report presented at the event disclosed that Viet Nam's fertility rate has remained stable at 2-2.1 children per woman since 2006.

With the current population scale, the country is likely to fulfil the target of keeping its population at below 93 million in 2015, no more than 98 million in 2020 and about 115-120 million in the mid-21st century.

Viet Nam's human development index (HDI) jumped from 0.573 points in 2005 to 0.638 points in 2013, ranking 121 among the 187 participating countries.

Its life expectancy rose from 72 in 2005 to 73.2 in 2014. The figure is now higher than that in other countries sharing the same per capita income with Viet Nam, the report said.

Participants said such achievements have significantly contributed to national socio-economic development, the realisation of the UN Millennium Development Goals, the improvement of people's living standards, poverty reduction and sustainable development.

However, they said, Viet Nam is experiencing a "golden population structure", also known as an aging population, which offers both opportunities and challenges.

The workshop reported that an unstable birth rate, a big gap in the fertility rate among regions across the country and gender inequality at birth are among challenges to the population work.

Bui The Duc, deputy head of the Party Central Committee's Commission for Popularisation and Education, said Viet Nam regards sustainable development as a national strategic target.

In order to reach this goal, the official suggested changes in the population work in the new context, including improving the quality of human resources, promoting high-value jobs to take advantage of the golden population structure, and developing the educational and health care systems in line with the strongly evolving population structure.

A representative from the UNFPA said the fund always works hand-in-hand with the Vietnamese Government by providing technical support and sharing experiences with the country on population-related issues.

It will assist Vietnamese policy makers in putting forth sound decisions that benefit locals, helping them fully enjoy their rights, including reproductive rights, the UN official said.

The workshop also looked into Viet Nam's birth rate forecast from 2015-35 and the predicted impacts of the population structure on national economic growth.

VNA/VNS/VOV/SGT/SGGP/TT/TN/Dantri